Better Germans

Stockholm, July 9, 2001.

And greetings today from Sweden, ja!

From memory my last mail was from Malmo in the aftermath of the Roskilde
festival, so I will continue from there. I got in contact with Johan
again and arranged to come and visit him in his home town of Lund, 10
minutes train ride north. Before then I thought I'd see a bit more of
what Malmo had to offer and was going to go to a "housing estate of the
future" exhibition until I found out it would cost me 150 SEK to get in.
I thought "bugger that" and went to the beach instead as it was a
beautiful day and much cheaper.

There were about a million people at the beach. It was quite similar to
Copenhagen with the little piers that took you out to swimming depth,
not quite golden sand, freezing water and no waves. But wow, the
girls... a few of whom, after a while, I met and got talking to. Just an
aside, I think every Swede either has been, or plans to go to Australia.
Which is a neat conversation starter. In any case, mid afternoon these
girls had to go but one of them gave me a phone number and said if I
changed my mind and stayed in Malmo another night I should give her a
call and they'd show me some nightlife.

After extensive deliberation over this offer I finally decided I
couldn't afford another night's hotel stay/restaurant meal/drinks bill
of a hundred quid on the Quixotic chase for skirt so I ended up just
going and seeing Johan in Lund. Lund is the oldest town in Sweden and
has its university as its raison d'etre. I didn't really see that much
of it as it was getting dark by the time we actually got out (well, as
dark as it gets over here -- more to say on that later) but it did come
across as Johan said, like the Swedish version of Oxford.

The next day Johan had to head off up the country to see his Mum so I in
turn decided to go straight to Stockholm. I missed the train I intended
to catch, but maybe this was a blessing as in the intervening couple of
hours I booked a ticket to Berlin from Gothamburg. So I'm flying down on
the 18th (after fighting with the Swedish phone system for a couple of
hours I also got somewhere to stay, but that's another story) and
staying for five days. On the Monday I'll head up to Hamburg and have a
couple of days there, then on up through Jutland and see Arhus
(Denmark's second biggest city) and then take a ferry to Norway. You get
a discount for being under 26 here, so the one way flight actually ended
up being pretty cheap, and doing it this way I don't end up backtracking
anywhere. Next big itinerary decision is after Finland. Russia: yes or
no?

So I arrived in Stockholm about 8:30pm after a boring but very rapid
train ride (on the X2000, the Swedish version of the shinkansen) and
attempted to call some hostels from the train station. Nobody answers
their phones these days. The one closest to the train station was full I
found out after a 10 minute walk, so I then took a bus to one of the
floating hostels. After I got there I found it was also full, but they
rang another place for me and got me a bed. Another bus ride later and I
finally got settled in.

Stockholm is built on water, so someone had the bright idea of
permanently mooring some old boats in a couple of different places and
turning them into floating hostels. Shades of convict hulks there. The
conditions are certainly a lot cleaner than a convict hulk but over two
nights I didn't get any more sleep than I would have in a rotting boat
full of rowdy inmates.

Even if you discount the Japanese guy snoring his head off in the bunk
beside me (surely I should be able to get a pistol license for such
occasions), it was very difficult to sleep because of the weather
conditions. I had gone out for a copule of beers with two Norwegans and
a Finn and come in fairly late (early?) at about 3:00, by which time the
sun is well and truly on its way up. This is very disturbing to one's
body clock! It's ok if you've been out *all* night and it's 7:00am and
you're supposed to be seeing the sun, but  when your body and mind say
"sleep!" and the sun disagrees with "Time to get up!" it really screws
with your phase.

So due to this and the fact that I had arrived the day summer in
Stockholm actually started for real and it was stinking hot in the tiny
little cabin I was in, I ended up getting bugger all sleep for my first
two nights. I bumbled through the next day doing boring stuff like
washing (would you believe there are only two coin-op laundries in
Stockholm?) and I finally met up with Alexandra, a Stockholm girl I'd
met in London at Icon.

She was on her first day of summer holidays and on her way to meet some
work friends at a park. So she collected me on the way and off we went
to this little park by the water. There wasn't a beach as such but there
was water to swim in so we did that and then hung around chatting away
for a while. Night catches up with you quite unexpectedly when the sun
doesn't go down until 11:30pm, but we realised just in time and at about
6-ish decided to go and get some grog to sit and drink.

This, you would expect, would not be much of a drama. But no, you're in
Sweden the nanny state! Alcohol is only sold by the state run
"Systembolaget" ("system company") shops which are open until 6:00pm or
so at night most days of the week. The shops are badly signposted, so
you've just got to know where they are, and you can't get anything cold!
We managed to get there just in time and took a number, then started
selecting what beer we wanted from the catalogue (there was an example
of each bottle of wine in display cases, but not the beer). You then go
to the counter and give your order which is brought out from the
storeroom. Warm. Quite a bizarre experience, and a humungous pain in the
arse.

We fixed the temperature problem by getting a bag of ice from McDonalds
(I'd never thought of that before) but it's otherwise an incredibly
impractical system. If you feel like a six pack of beer with your pizza
in a park for dinner you can't do it after 6:00pm. There's no
competition on prices or range (though admittedly the range is pretty
good) and if a friend invites you over to their place for dinner you
can't just grab a bottle of wine on the way. So anyway, that was my
first typically Swedish experience of the last few days.

My next one came later that night when I got to play a game called
"kubb". It's something I'd seen quite a number of times and couldn't
work out. You've got five wooden blocks at either side, roughly six
meters apart, and a "king" in the middle. The opposing teams then try to
throw sticks at the blocks and knock them down and if you get all the
other team's blocks down you get to throw for the king and when you hit
that you win. There are some subtleties, but that's basically it. It is
quite a bit harder than it sounds, especially when you've had a few
beers (the state in which it usually seems to be played). So I ended up
playing that until darkness with another set of locals (and eventually
getting one of their phone numbers too :-).

I stayed at Alex's place that night (and since) and hence have been
getting some sleep (heaven!); and another night after going to a proper
beach (in some sort of national park with a beautiful pine forest
setting) we all went out to dinner. We went for Thai and it was the best
meal I'd had in ages and the only thing I'd had since leaving Sydney
that compared to Thai food you can get at home. Three times the price,
but hey...

After dinner came my next Swedishism... snus. It's a form of tobacco the
Swedes stick under their upper lip next to their gums. Quite a civilised
nicotine delivery system I think, as it doesn't bother anyone else. So
anyway, after dinner, someone asks me if I'd tried it and I said no, but
I'd give it a go at least once if anyone ever offered me some. And the
tin appears under my nose. So I take a little pillow (they look sort of
like little teabags or something) and in she goes. I got a mild minty
burning sensation rather quickly, and then about a minute later my head
started seriously spinning!

This was of course to everybody else's amusement. I think it's like
Aussies watching Americans try Vegemite. Since your gums are so
absorbent the stuff gets straight into your blood and straight into your
head very quickly. Usually, and especially after a number of beers
(thankfully I'd only had two) the response of first time users is to try
and stand up, fall straight back down and then probably vomit. I wasn't
silly enough to try and stand up and was sensible enough to take it out
after five minutes so I avoided both consequences but it was still quite
odd. After another 15 minutes or so I started coming down as it were,
and it wasn't that unpleasant, but I still don't think it's something
I'm going to do regularly. All you're doing is trading lung cancer for
gum cancer (but at least you don't give cancer to anyone else).

The next day I met up with Magnus, another friend ex-Icon London (hi
Magnus!) and so that was fun catching up on all the gossip. Magnus had
an offer for me I couldn't refuse: he and Anika (his wife) had booked a
place in Gotland, the "Swedish Goa" and invited me over for a few days!
This is very cool, as it's apparently a huge party place, there's some
good diving and nice beaches. So after another day of absorbing
Stockholm I'm going to take him up on his generous offer and lob over
there (5 hour boat ride from the end of the Stockholm train line) for a
few days before heading back across to Gothamburg and on to Berlin.

And now back to Stockholm. It was only today that I have been well slept
enough to actually start checking out the place independently. I spent
today wandering around the old city of Stockholm, Gamla Stan. It was a
bit dreary today (the excellent weather couldn't hold for long) but the
area is still very pretty. Only problem is that it's been turned into a
tourist ghetto. The only thing you can find in the main street is
Americans with bum bags and shops selling tourist kitsch to them.
Therefore, it's quite lifeless. If you move away from that main street
there are some nice other bits (including a gothic looking church inside
which someone was practising the organ) but I almost got trampled by one
tour group which spoiled it somewhat.

The other thing I saw today was the Nobel Prize museum (I was hiding
from the rain). It's a little small, but they had things like a
recording of Martin Luther King's peace prize acceptance speech, which
I'd never heard in full before. But don't bother watching the films
about Copenhagen in the time of Neils Bohr or Paris and Hemmingway --
they're utter wank.

So you'll all hear from me next probably after my little holiday in
Gotland, which I'm quite looking forward to. As for my impressions of
Stockholm, I think I still prefer Copenhagen. Yeah, the canals are nice
but Copenhagen has some of those too, and it doesn't have the ugly 50s
and 60s buildings which populate part of Stockholm's modern city centre.
Gamla Stan is very pretty, but lifeless and pointless due to the
touristization of it. And I hate Telia (the telco who own the payphones)
with a passion. They're thieves and bloody difficult to deal with into
the bargain. It just shouldn't be like that in a modern city, especially
not a Scandanavian one. And then there's the fact you can't get a beer
when you want one (but when you do get one, at least they serve them the
right size -- 40cl, as close to a Schooner as shit is to swearing). But
maybe the Swedes are more fun than the Danes. Or maybe the call that
someone made, that Swedes are "Better Germans" is justified, maybe a
little bit. And still there's Norway and
Finland to go...

So until then dear readers, keep me updated on what's going on at home!

Cheers, Robert.